Trump: Obama Must Release Birth Certificate

Donald Trump is calling on President Barack Obama to produce his birth certificate and end speculation he was born outside the United States.

"I want him to show his birth certificate. I want him to show his birth certificate," Trump said on ABC's "The View." "There's something on that birth certificate that he doesn't like."

Trump said he believe Obama "probably" was born in the United States but repeated questions he raised last week about the president's childhood, CNN reported.

"If you go back to my first grade, my kindergarten, people remember me. Nobody from those early years remembers him," Trump said. "If you're going to be president of the United States, it says very profoundly you have to be born in this country."

Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie, a friend of Obama's parents in Hawaii who said he remembers when the future president was born, first vowed to produce an original copy of the president's birth certificate this year.

But he abandoned those efforts because it is against state law to release private documents, CNN quoted his spokeswoman as saying.

Until now, the president’s representatives have depended on a certification of live birth that reported his birthplace as Honolulu, Hawaii.

The certification of live birth is a summary of the birth certificate's details, but does not include information typically found in the full certificate, such as place of birth and attending physician.

Trump is not alone in suggesting that Obama should release his full birth certificate.

In December, MSNBC’s pro-Obama host Chris Matthews called on the president to release his long-form birth certificate to settle the controversy surrounding his birthplace once and for all, saying, “If it exists, why not put it out?”

“I am not a birther,” Matthews declared. “I am an enemy of the birthers.”

But he held up the long-form birth certificate of someone who was born the day before Obama, and compared it with the shorter version Obama has released, which to the birthers, he said, “is evidence that he really ain’t one of us.

“Why has the president himself not demanded that they put out the official document?” Matthews said.

“Why doesn’t the governor just say, snap it up, whoever’s there at the department of records, send me a copy right now? Why doesn’t the president just say, send me a copy right now? Why doesn’t [White House press secretary Robert] Gibbs and [senior adviser David] Axelrod say, let’s just get this crappy story dead? Why not do it?

“The department out there just said the other day that there is such a thing. It exists. The original document of his birth is available. They have it in storage, they said. And if it exists, why not put it out?

“Will there be any harm done by releasing the original document?”

But Obama’s critics — many of whom don’t buy in the birther theory that he was born outside the United States — still note a pattern of secrecy surrounding much of Obama’s life before he entered politics. They note that Obama never has unveiled many key documents that presidential candidates traditionally release to the press and the public.

For example:

During the presidential campaign, Obama released just one brief document detailing his personal health, while GOP opponent John McCain released what he said was his complete medical file totaling more than 1,500 pages. The Obama campaign eventually released some routine lab-test results and electrocardiograms for Obama.

Obama refused to offer his official papers as a state legislator in Illinois and did not produce correspondence, such as letters from lobbyists and other information, from his days in the Illinois Senate.

Obama did not release his client list as an attorney or his billing records.

Obama declined to release his college records from Occidental College, where he studied for two years before transferring to Columbia University.

Obama’s campaign refused to give Columbia University, where he earned an undergraduate degree in political science, permission to release his transcripts. Such transcripts would list the courses Obama took, and his grades.